(First, english isnt my first language so sorry if i misspell something)

I'm making a game inspired by Chinese feudal era, 3-5 players, with farms, soldiers and generals as the main tabs. A player can transform their farms into soldiers or generals and attack or defend them. And loot some farms to another player. The player who reach 50 farm, wins. If a player dosnt have any farm, loses.

The problem is that when a player starts attacking to another a snowball effect occurs and the game is reduced to the total annihilation of another played by brute force and luck. And never ocours any of strategy or negotiation what its something i want include.The idea is not to be a "Cold War" where nobody attacks, but neither be a rush of troops of the lucky guy to the win..

Hi Andrés, welcome Your English is much better than any of my other languages!

Without some detail of how your game actually works, it's difficult to offer specific advice, but a few ideas come to mind.

Introduce some kind of "upkeep" mechanic like a lot of computer strategy games have, where in order to have x number of soldiers/generals active, a player must provide food from y number of farms. This would limit a player's ability to transform into a massive army and could encourage them to leave some troops behind to defend their farms. Otherwise they risk not being able to support their army.

(This could be quite time-consuming and fiddly to keep track of with larger armies)

Pinch an idea from the many variants of Risk or Small World, where the more a player attacks, the more thinly spread they get, and the more vulnerable to counterattack they become.

Spread actions out over multiple turns. ie: Transforming a farm into soldiers takes two turns, so other players have a chance to see this and react, rather than just being surprised by a huge army. Or perhaps once a farm has been taken over, it takes a turn before it can be defended efficiently (troops taking time to dig in, costs extra soldiers to defend), and several turns before it can be transformed into soldiers (it takes a while to get an enemy farm working again)?

By the way, for "evitar", I'd use "avoid" or "prevent" in English. With a title like "How can I evite..." you run the risk of people thinking you mean "How can I invite..." which has the opposite meaning.

By the way, for "evitar", I'd use "avoid" or "prevent" in English. With a title like "How can I evite..." you run the risk of people thinking you mean "How can I invite..." which has the opposite meaning.

When first reading the title, I was wondering whether it was a typo for "invite", "evoke", or "evince", or perhaps a contraction of "electronic invitation" (none of which have the intended meaning).

Hi Andrés, welcome Your English is much better than any of my other languages!

Google translate helps a lot

spitfire23bc wrote:

Without some detail of how your game actually works, it's difficult to offer specific advice, but a few ideas come to mind.

there is some photos how it looks like, maybe that helps:

There you can see a castlle, some farms (the colored tokens), some wariors (the white one), genereals (blue dots(?) on the white tokens) a emperor and the philosophy token (gives somes bonus). and far away a atacking army.

And there how it look from above, three castlle with his farms and wariors, and some troops attacking.. And in the center one calendar who gives bonus in each round.. (some positives, some negatives, like reduces or incress the atack, the defense, etc)

the pillage mechanic is: the attack untis - the defensor units = number of farms pillages

spitfire23bc wrote:

Introduce some kind of "upkeep" mechanic like a lot of computer strategy games have, where in order to have x number of soldiers/generals active, a player must provide food from y number of farms. This would limit a player's ability to transform into a massive army and could encourage them to leave some troops behind to defend their farms. Otherwise they risk not being able to support their army.

(This could be quite time-consuming and fiddly to keep track of with larger armies)

That's a variant that I thought and had not yet the time to prove: the amount you may have wariors and generals equal to the number of farms, maybe that can stop some large armies, but if someone has few farms also it becomes more vulnerable.. but it's try.

maybe another thing can be, the attacker losses the half of his army.. this is disusive idea...

spitfire23bc wrote:

Pinch an idea from the many variants of Risk or Small World, where the more a player attacks, the more thinly spread they get, and the more vulnerable to counterattack they become.

that's what 's going on, if someone attacks him becomes very vulnerable and it is very hard to avoid dont attack that guy

spitfire23bc wrote:

Spread actions out over multiple turns. ie: Transforming a farm into soldiers takes two turns, so other players have a chance to see this and react, rather than just being surprised by a huge army. Or perhaps once a farm has been taken over, it takes a turn before it can be defended efficiently (troops taking time to dig in, costs extra soldiers to defend), and several turns before it can be transformed into soldiers (it takes a while to get an enemy farm working again)?

this is a interesting idea, this can work... I'll try that and then tell you how it works

By the way, for "evitar", I'd use "avoid" or "prevent" in English. With a title like "How can I evite..." you run the risk of people thinking you mean "How can I invite..." which has the opposite meaning.

the pillage mechanic is: the attack untis - the defensor units = number of farms pillages

You could modify this to make attacking less easy/snowbally. Some examples:

- Have a set of predetermined outcomes. If attackers - defenders >= 1, pillage 1 farm; if >= 3 pillage 2 farms; if >= 6 pillage 3 farms. This way you can impose limits on the damage a large army can do on a single turn (obviously, you'd need to modify my numbers for your game); - Give attack/defence bonuses based on adjacent/flanking units to encourage strategic placement of units, rather than just rushing to the closest farm.

Byshocker wrote:

spitfire23bc wrote:

Introduce some kind of "upkeep" mechanic like a lot of computer strategy games have, where in order to have x number of soldiers/generals active, a player must provide food from y number of farms. This would limit a player's ability to transform into a massive army and could encourage them to leave some troops behind to defend their farms. Otherwise they risk not being able to support their army.

(This could be quite time-consuming and fiddly to keep track of with larger armies)

That's a variant that I thought and had not yet the time to prove: the amount you may have wariors and generals equal to the number of farms, maybe that can stop some large armies, but if someone has few farms also it becomes more vulnerable.. but it's try.

maybe another thing can be, the attacker losses the half of his army.. this is disusive idea...

It doesn't have to be a 1:1 ratio of units to farms. You could rule that a single farm will support 10 units, the second farm will support another 5 units, the third farm another 2 units, and every other farm only 1 more unit after that (again, you'd need to tweak the numbers). This way, it becomes difficult to build up an enormous army quickly, and losing farms doesn't necessarily destroy a player's army.

Yes, losing half your army for a successful attack feels like it might be frustrating. No-one will want to attack if they're arbitrarily punished for it. I think in Smallworld and Risk, the attacker loses units equal to the number of defending units, so this could be explored.

Byshocker wrote:

spitfire23bc wrote:

Pinch an idea from the many variants of Risk or Small World, where the more a player attacks, the more thinly spread they get, and the more vulnerable to counterattack they become.

that's what 's going on, if someone attacks him becomes very vulnerable and it is very hard to avoid dont attack that guy

If a player has made the strategic mistake of spreading their forces too thinly, then perhaps they should suffer the consequences?

Byshocker wrote:

spitfire23bc wrote:

Spread actions out over multiple turns. ie: Transforming a farm into soldiers takes two turns, so other players have a chance to see this and react, rather than just being surprised by a huge army. Or perhaps once a farm has been taken over, it takes a turn before it can be defended efficiently (troops taking time to dig in, costs extra soldiers to defend), and several turns before it can be transformed into soldiers (it takes a while to get an enemy farm working again)?

this is a interesting idea, this can work... I'll try that and then tell you how it works

the pillage mechanic is: the attack untis - the defensor units = number of farms pillages

You could modify this to make attacking less easy/snowbally. Some examples:

- Have a set of predetermined outcomes. If attackers - defenders >= 1, pillage 1 farm; if >= 3 pillage 2 farms; if >= 6 pillage 3 farms. This way you can impose limits on the damage a large army can do on a single turn (obviously, you'd need to modify my numbers for your game); - Give attack/defence bonuses based on adjacent/flanking units to encourage strategic placement of units, rather than just rushing to the closest farm.

Byshocker wrote:

spitfire23bc wrote:

Introduce some kind of "upkeep" mechanic like a lot of computer strategy games have, where in order to have x number of soldiers/generals active, a player must provide food from y number of farms. This would limit a player's ability to transform into a massive army and could encourage them to leave some troops behind to defend their farms. Otherwise they risk not being able to support their army.

(This could be quite time-consuming and fiddly to keep track of with larger armies)

That's a variant that I thought and had not yet the time to prove: the amount you may have wariors and generals equal to the number of farms, maybe that can stop some large armies, but if someone has few farms also it becomes more vulnerable.. but it's try.

maybe another thing can be, the attacker losses the half of his army.. this is disusive idea...

It doesn't have to be a 1:1 ratio of units to farms. You could rule that a single farm will support 10 units, the second farm will support another 5 units, the third farm another 2 units, and every other farm only 1 more unit after that (again, you'd need to tweak the numbers). This way, it becomes difficult to build up an enormous army quickly, and losing farms doesn't necessarily destroy a player's army.

Yes, losing half your army for a successful attack feels like it might be frustrating. No-one will want to attack if they're arbitrarily punished for it. I think in Smallworld and Risk, the attacker loses units equal to the number of defending units, so this could be explored.

Byshocker wrote:

spitfire23bc wrote:

Pinch an idea from the many variants of Risk or Small World, where the more a player attacks, the more thinly spread they get, and the more vulnerable to counterattack they become.

that's what 's going on, if someone attacks him becomes very vulnerable and it is very hard to avoid dont attack that guy

If a player has made the strategic mistake of spreading their forces too thinly, then perhaps they should suffer the consequences?

welp, the changes I made was: putting uppkeep 1:1 on farms and units and added a few strategic cards:

the attacker player choose one in secret, the deffender too, and according to the card they have chosen as the combat is resolved.. perhaps making attacks very strongly and still fail for a bad decision.